Maybe a journal (comments welcome)

[GollyGadget]

You look so happy to be winter running.

 

[flav]

This training plan highlights how much my body wants to conserve energy. I always was better at endurance than short intensity bursts.

Before and during speed workouts my brain screams how much I hate this. Sweaty palms before getting out of the door and all. I can convince myself to do x00 meters at a fast pace by taking each interval one at a time but I totally dread tempo runs. Last Wednesday was a 5km HM tempo and I ended at LR pace. I had no spunk, no desire and no pleasure. Which makes it really hard to continue pushing myself just to stay in shape. I will keep trying but I don’t want it to take all the pleasure out of running. Maybe I don’t need the performance pressure in sports these days. Anyhow, there is some introspection to do… eventually.

 

[jmasgat]

This training plan highlights how much my body wants to conserve energy. I always was better at endurance than short intensity bursts.

Before and during speed workouts my brain screams how much I hate this. Sweaty palms before getting out of the door and all. I can convince myself to do x00 meters at a fast pace by taking each interval one at a time but I totally dread tempo runs. Last Wednesday was a 5km HM tempo and I ended at LR pace. I had no spunk, no desire and no pleasure. Which makes it really hard to continue pushing myself just to stay in shape. I will keep trying but I don’t want it to take all the pleasure out of running. Maybe I don’t need the performance pressure in sports these days. Anyhow, there is some introspection to do… eventually.

Well....my answer got accidentally canceled....Let's try again. Short version this time.....

Anyhow. I totally get this. happens to me now just as you described. Time does get the last laugh, so at some point it makes no sense for me to overthink "Now vs Then", but being human, that's what I do.

I am following a HM plan now developed by Garmin based on what I thought was a conservative HM time. It's fine, but part of me knows I might be able to do better with more intense effort--but is it worth it. As you say, at some point if the pleasure of running turns to dread chasing old fitness levels, then that is not good.

I have no magic answer to your situation, just know that you aren't alone and work on trying to find what will be sustainable/fun/satisfying going forward.

 

[GollyGadget]

You're not alone. I don't mind the short speed sessions, but I dread any sort of tempo or threshold. I have no advice, just wanted you to know that you aren't the only one.

 

[flav]

Thank you @jmasgat and @GollyGadget

There is really an inner fight between the rational thinking that says this run is good for you and the reptilian brain who just asks to chill running on a beach.

I was thinking about my previous post while running an easy 11km this morning and found a lot of similarities with the fear of heights. It happened to me a handful of times but the argument between these two parts of me can be quite ferocious. They have different perceptions of the same thing (a height or a run) and don’t reason the same way!

 

[LSUlakes]

This training plan highlights how much my body wants to conserve energy. I always was better at endurance than short intensity bursts.

Before and during speed workouts my brain screams how much I hate this. Sweaty palms before getting out of the door and all. I can convince myself to do x00 meters at a fast pace by taking each interval one at a time but I totally dread tempo runs. Last Wednesday was a 5km HM tempo and I ended at LR pace. I had no spunk, no desire and no pleasure. Which makes it really hard to continue pushing myself just to stay in shape. I will keep trying but I don’t want it to take all the pleasure out of running. Maybe I don’t need the performance pressure in sports these days. Anyhow, there is some introspection to do… eventually.

Ive been doing tempo runs lately to prepare for a half in a few weeks and I'm not sure which one is more difficult, the mile repeats or the temp runs. Both of them are difficult but I feel like with the mile repeats, in my head I only have to run this mile hard then a easy half mile, over and over again, whereas the tempo run is like oh we get to go a little slower, but now I have to hold this pace for 2-5 miles. I typically am half and half on them, part of me dreads getting out the bed to run them, but then I also want to see what I can do lol. Its a odd feeling. Then there's the post run over analyzing Garmin on how the run went and seeing how Garmin thinks the run went. If Garmin rewards me with improved "race prediction" metrics, then I assume it was a successful workout. The hard work is worth it, keep up the work!

 

[flav]

This is maybe a journal… surely a very free form type.

I had a lot a questions in my mind in the last few weeks, sparked by different events:
- We did not register to MW 2026, hence do I really need to race mid-April (originally for A corral PoT)? No, although it is good for my physical health to push myself.
- In an interview fashion: What is the best race you ran? My slowest marathons. The top two were after running three races in the days prior (Dopey and Lumberjack) and in extremely hot weather. The other special one in my heart was NYC because I ran with DH in the biggest marathon of all. That clarifies why I am not thrilled about a local fast race, it is just not that important to me.
- Why did DH say that he didn’t want to run intervals with me? He hates to see me struggle and found that I was heading out of the door with negative feelings.
- What is this sudden ouch in my knee? I don’t know but I sure have stayed at easy peace since then.
- Is my phone making me run weird? Since I mostly run with DH, I decided to buy a watch, a Coros Pace 3, last weekend and to leave my phone home.

So my last three weeks have been run slowly. The volume is solid though. I have enjoyed them for except for the sharp knee pain that came suddenly a few times and disappeared quickly.

I will see how the last three weeks of my training plan go and see what race objectives I give myself. I am tempted by a blind race at this point.

 

[flav]

Living with a sport watch is a bigger adaptation than I thought

I am trying to wear it constantly for the first week. The amount of data is almost scary. I find myself telling me to go back to sleep in the middle of the night or else my watch will chastise me with a Fair sleep warning!

Yesterday, I had the first training run that I had preprogrammed into the watch and I purposely left my phone at home. I thought that this would almost be like a blind run except for when there was a planned lap. Well, talk about compensating with another sense… The watch kept beeping at me. I had obviously not heard these beeps before so I learnt on the go than frantic beep-beep-beep means that I am going too fast, depressing beep-beep means too slow, neutral beep-beep that I am back within the targeted paces, another beep is for distance warning and the lap switch are indeed very obvious. This watch is noisy!

Then I looked at the stats The watch tells me that I have a 57% score on my workout. That I am exhausted with a body battery at 0% and that it will take me 4 days to recover. How exciting… This watch is judgy too!

Anyhow, the watch metrics confirmed what I already knew from the run… I am nowhere near my target fitness for my next race.

As for my relationship with the watch, we will keep working on it

 

[accm]

Sounds like Coros are just as judgy as Garmins. And thank you for the reminder that I need to adjust some of the settings on my Garmin. All the beeping/vibrating drives me crazy while I'm running.

 

[nancipants]

I turn off most of the beeps. The only ones I leave on for my "normal" runs are for run/walk intervals.

 

[jmasgat]

I tend to view with a hefty dose of skepticism/grains of salt a lot of what Garmin flashes at me--and that goes for the sleep metrics. There are days when it seems spot on---(like getting up for a Disney race and it says I've gotten insufficient sleep!) But other days, it's hard to figure out what the heck it was looking at.

As for in-run alarms: I don't have any audible sounds. Periodically it vibrates--I usually do paces too fast--and that can be helpful, but too much feedback is....too much!

 

[GollyGadget]

I couldn't figure out how to disable the beeping quick enough when I got my new Garmin last year. Idk who wants that much noise.

 

[WillRunForPizza]

I have an Apple Watch, so I don't have quite the same training analysis as everyone else. But of what I do have, the only things I really look at are resting HR and HRV. Even if my watch did give me sleep analysis, I wouldn't find it very useful; I can tell whether or not I've slept well without looking at my watch, thanks.

Like others, I used interval pace alerts about twice before going, "Nope!" Tell me when the interval starts and ends and nothing else, please!

 

[flav]

Demi-marathon de Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu Race Report

This race is organized by Courses thématiques and is the evolution of what used to be Marathon des érables. When they took over, they moved it next to the beautiful Richelieu river. The course is a flat out and back following the river with an extra out and back on a barrier island. It is also always pretty much the first Spring race so on the cool side temperature wise, which is why we had chosen it when I was planning to attempt a PR… back in January. For all reasons mentioned previously this month, we since adjusted the objectives.

I woke up at 4:45, left the house at 6:00, parked at the site at 7:00, did a pit stop and was back in the car with my bib and shirt by 7:15. It was pretty chilly with the wind. I rested in the warmth, decided to run in the race shirt (same make as my other shirts from them so I knew it would be comfortable), pinned the bib and put my ASICS Novablast for their longest run ever (I find the Saucony Triumph too slow). At 8:00 I was ready for my warmup… I put my jacket on for it, brr. After dropping the coat back at the car I made my way towards the porta potty line and luckily entered one at 8:28.

I lined up in the second corral by 8:30, a few rows behind the 2 hours pacer and we were off! My emotions were a bit everywhere. I wasn’t sure why I was there but I was. This was a blind race, meaning that I wasn’t going to look at (or hear anything from) my watch at all. As planned, I did not stress with people passing me, I just tried not to loose too much ground from the pacer. We had head wind in the forward direction. On the extension switch back, I saw that I was a few hundred metres behind. By the farther switch back, I was about half a kilometre behind. That was also the point where I had to assess whether I was in shape to pick up the pace. And I did. I started passing people but being conscious to do it gradually. One kilometre at a time. I passed the 2h pacer before kilometre 19. My legs just kept going. I sprinted the last stretch. And just like that, I was back into thinking that it is possible to enjoy a race even when pushing a bit. That is the biggest success that could have come out of this event, and it would not have happened without coach @DopeyBadger recommendations.


I also have a medal and some (included with registration) pictures to remember it. I might even be tempted to get more in 2025!

Other lessons learnt are:

• Do not let the maintenance training become all slow endurance, speed is hard to regain.
• Shoes a bit stiffer can be good.
• Don’t keep gels for too long, even if they are ok, I might not trust them to be.
• I am lucky to be able to run the way I do (this one is worth repeating every time).

 

[col1]

Congrats sounds like a great race

 

[RuntheMouse]

Nice job, sounds well executed! Great race pic!

 

[jmasgat]

Great race and great photo! Glad you had a good time.

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Great job! Love the photo.

 

[accm]

Congrats!! Sounds like a great race! I love that they include the pictures

 

[GollyGadget]

Congrats on a positive race experience!

I've been thinking about you during my threshold workouts lately. Mostly my thoughts are versions of "why am I putting myself through this torture for my supposed to be fun hobby?" I have no answers yet, but will report back when I do.